Advances in airplane design have led to the development of numerous mutually dependent systems. Failures or malfunctions of one or more of these systems often affect other systems, directly or indirectly. Additionally, analysis of these failures/malfunctions and their direct and indirect effects is often required as part of a certification process. Typically such analyses are manually performed by groups of system analysts, without reference to a system or process capable of facilitating such analyses.
Additionally, advances in networks and computer systems have increasingly facilitated computer system users in collaborating with other users in the creation and modification of a shared block of data. Examples abound, including online “bulletin boards,” which allow multiple users in different locations connected by the Internet or some other network to collaborate in creating and modifying data of the “bulletin board.”
While recent advances have allowed groups of system analysts to collaborate through a tool similar to an online bulletin board, no system or process has presented the malfunction and failure effects data in a relational fashion, for example, with each malfunction/failure linked to one or more direct effects, and each direct effect linked to one or more indirect effects, facilitating users in defining malfunctions/failures and direct and indirect effects, and in viewing and/or modifying the malfunctions/failures and effects.